Future Salon

Future of Tradition this Friday the 20th of December ...

Take a break from the Holiday craziness and join us for some food for thought, this Friday the 20th 7pm Barnes and Noble at the Hillsdale Shopping center.

Theme is 'The Future of Tradition'. How will tradition change, being influenced by new technology and how does tradition influence technology.

Howard Rheingold for example observed women in a funeral procession in Asia(I think it was) all looking down at their hands in front of them. It took him a while to realize, that they were holding their cell phone in their hands and reading/writing SMS messages.
(We will cover Howard's Smartmobs book in January)

J.S.Anderson suggested the following books for this months theme:
Harold Blume The Western Canon
Ruin the Sacred Truths : Poetry and Belief From the
Bible to the Present
Additional ones see his post.
 
Also bring lots of new stories about technology, science, social trends, ... that you stumbled over during the last month. We will take time to do a round of introducing these. 

Hope to see you all there, Mark.

P.S. Where: Barnes and Noble bookstore at the Hillsdale Shopping Center just across of the San Mateo Caltrain Station. 11 West Hillsdale Blvd., Hillsdale Shopping Center San Mateo, CA 94403 650-341-5560  

When: 7:00 to 9:00 pm. You may also join us for dinner afterwords next door at Romano’s Macaroni Grill.

Mercedes is in trouble ...

If you check the Zeitgeist according to Google, they list the most searched after car manufacturers in Germany.

Germans are obsessed with cars and the high end segment used to be owned by Mercedes. In the 70s and 80s BMW caught up with them and they were going head to head for years.

In the 90s Audi managed to improve it's image and joined them at the top.

The smart marketing with Bond and BMW Films seems to pay off. BMW is number one. Mercedes can't be happy at place six.

The future of tradition ...

 

My original plan for the December Futurist Salon did not pan out.

As it is so close to the holidays, Shawn came up with the idea of 'The future of tradition'. Alone the sound of these words and how they ring in my head is great.

Traditions are very powerful and also permanently evolving. Take for example Halloween, which is now spreading all over the globe and is also evolving here in the US.

Or the Advent calendar, where I am testing at the moment how far one can take it as a blog. (Start to read it from the bottom, the 30th of November post)

This calendar is also my holiday greeting to all of you following this Salon. I am very happy that you are exploring the future with me. Makes it so much more fun.

We used to have two books, then went down to one, this time I did not find a fitting book(Not that I really looked very long.) Please bring articles and stories about where it is going with tradition. If this is not working out, we just go next door to Ramona's Grill earlier.

As always it is on the third Friday of the month, which is the 20th of December this time at the Barns and Nobel in San Mateo: 7 pm.

See you all there, Mark.

Reality check: View from the past to the future and into the future from here ...

Mike Langberg from Mercury News wrote a column in 1992 looking 10 years ahead. He now checks it against today's reality. Think back where have you been in 1992 and how you survived without internet access.

He also does a column with predictions for 2012. Although I think he is not very concrete with his predictions, far less then 10 years ago. None of his predictions are really surprising if you have followed our posts here, which is reassuring.